Gamification of Safe Driving
Gamify car dashboards, or an app itself on your phone, that rewards safe and efficient driving, accompanied by a small social media framework. There can be badges for keeping your vehicle on its eco-efficiency setting, days without a ticket or accident, for not speeding up or braking suddenly, for taking more fuel-efficient routes, for marking out speed traps, etc.. The Waze app performs some of these functions already.
Speed Tracker
Saves a record of your speed and GPS coordinates for, say, an entire trip, which can be kept or discarded afterward, to be used to protest speeding tickets…or get out of them completely. There will probably be no support from policing or court bureaucracies, since speeding tickets, etc., are money-making schemes and have nothing to do with maintaining traffic safety.
Ending Traffic Light Stupidity
Not really an app idea but really just stating a desire to overhaul the system. Traffic like software seems over-engineered; I know this because a green light will turn red when there’s no presence of any cross-traffic. There’s probably a simpler way, but that probably has more to do with regulatory factors than effective traffic control.
2 Comments
In the OKC Metro area, we still have a large number of traffic lights controlled by the ancient timers and switches in a huge metal cabinet somewhere close to the intersection. The sensors are probably the most modern part of the whole thing — basic metal detectors. On the other hand, there are probably three intersections I see on a regular basis that actually sense my bicycle and give me a light with no other traffic present.
I think the “lights turning when there’s no cross traffic” thing might be a safeguard in case there are any bikes present that don’t trip the censors. Or they’re on a timer, like the ones you mentioned. Just seems to be there’s an easier/more effective way to do this.
There’s a bored teenager somewhere that needs a hackathon…he’d come up with a great solution.